Page:On translating Homer. Last words. A lecture given at Oxford.djvu/31

20 in all its clearness, by this poetical specimen:

Now, does Mr. Newman really think that Sophocles could, as he says, ‘no more help feeling at every instant the foreign and antiquated character of Homer, than an Englishman can help feeling the same in hearing’ these lines? Is he quite sure of it? He says he is; he will not allow of any doubt or hesitation in the matter. I had confessed we could not really know how Homer seemed to Sophocles;—‘Let Mr. Arnold confess for himself,’ cries Mr. Newman, ‘and not for me, who know perfectly well.’ And this is what he knows!

Mr. Newman says, however, that I ‘play fallaciously on the words familiar and unfamiliar;’ that ‘Homer’s words may have been familiar to the Athenians (i. e. often heard) even when they were either not understood by them, or else, being understood, were yet felt and known to be utterly foreign. Let my renderings,’ he continues, ‘be heard, as Pope or even Cowper has been heard, and no one will be “surprised.

But the whole question is here. The translator must not assume that to have taken place which has not taken place, although, perhaps, he may wish it to have taken place,—namely, that his diction is